My advice to stop with pursueing childish dreams and go to college for a useful degree in order to get a real job. And if you have time left after working each day, try to create a game in your free time and see how it works out. If you fail miserabily, you can go back to your daily job. But if you don't get a degree/normal job and fail miserabily at making a game...well...good luck ever finding a job/wife/whatever.
My advice to stop with pursueing childish dreams and go to college for a useful degree in order to get a real job. And if you have time left after working each day, try to create a game in your free time and see how it works out. If you fail miserabily, you can go back to your daily job. But if you don't get a degree/normal job and fail miserabily at making a game...well...good luck ever finding a job/wife/whatever.
I think that if you get a degree in computer engineering you can't really go wrong - you'll always have a secure "fallback" job AND you'll be getting a degree in something that will be useful towards your dream career. Engineers in general are always in pretty high demand.
What's up with all the "I'm going to be a game designer" threads this week. Everyone says it but nobody has any actual ideas or the drive to make it. Then again, I said the same thing, but at least I'm in the process of developing my first game.
My advice to stop with pursueing childish dreams and go to college for a useful degree in order to get a real job. And if you have time left after working each day, try to create a game in your free time and see how it works out. If you fail miserabily, you can go back to your daily job. But if you don't get a degree/normal job and fail miserabily at making a game...well...good luck ever finding a job/wife/whatever.
Well, my alternative is to try to join a think tank right out of college, spend a few years in it, build up a resume doing that, get involved in museum work, and write papers on Gustavus Adolphus and the 7 Years War and other Western European shenanigans. Which, fortunately, involves the history degree I'm already pursuing.
Adopting a perspective that says "It's hard, so I'm not going to do it" would feel more childish to me than pursuing the dream in the first place, I think. It just takes careful planning and dedication to make a goal go from childish to feasible.
@superpow said:
What's up with all the "I'm going to be a game designer" threads this week. Everyone says it but nobody has any actual ideas or the drive to make it. Then again, I said the same thing, but at least I'm in the process of developing my first game.
What evidence do you have to suggest that all of the other "I'm going to be a game designers" aren't also in the process of developing their first game?
My advice to stop with pursueing childish dreams and go to college for a useful degree in order to get a real job. And if you have time left after working each day, try to create a game in your free time and see how it works out. If you fail miserabily, you can go back to your daily job. But if you don't get a degree/normal job and fail miserabily at making a game...well...good luck ever finding a job/wife/whatever.
So pursuing a dream is childish? And trolling isn't childish?
Most importantly I would say go to the friday of GDC, they have a student thing, you get in for 75 dollars and you will learn a ton. After going to that I felt like I had been stumbling in the dark the whole time prior. As someone who is trying to get into game design it seems the easiest way in is through either programming or art, and most of the other positions are usually hired straight from within, out of one of these two groups. Most college classes I've seen are focused on one or the other of these fields with also a very basic Game Design class to complement it. If you want to get into the industry, I cannot recommend enough that you pursue one of these two fields (at a proper college), because they are the only ones that are in actual demand. Occasionally testers used to be hired up, and some industry greats like David Jaffe started out this way, but honestly that just doesn't happen anymore. I say this as someone whose wanted to write for video games since I was a child, and continues to pursue this dream, with the full knowledge that it will likely never happen because the position is not valued. If you're still not convinced that you need to be an artist or a programmer, then how you get in to the industry depends on what position you're looking for. For a writer they tend to value an English, or Creative Writing degree over game design courses. Also, just to reiterate: GDC go on Friday. I hope I didn't crush any dreams with this post, and I sincerely wish you success in your pursuit.
My absolute dream job would be to be a video game programmer.
I'm a scientist at the moment, and do a lot of programming in the realm of simulation and calculation of electromagnetic resonances and that's all fine and dandy.. but it's pretty boring from a programming perspective. I'd absolutely love to be a video game programmer, but I'm keeping my expectations in check and going to keep video game programming purely as a hobby for probably the foreseeable future.
I'm not going to quit my day job to leap into the games industry, and I'd tentatively suggest you shouldn't either.
My advice to stop with pursueing childish dreams and go to college for a useful degree in order to get a real job. And if you have time left after working each day, try to create a game in your free time and see how it works out. If you fail miserabily, you can go back to your daily job. But if you don't get a degree/normal job and fail miserabily at making a game...well...good luck ever finding a job/wife/whatever.
So pursuing a dream is childish? And trolling isn't childish?
Loving videogames does not mean you'll be any good at making them. This is a childish dream, we all thought making a videogame would be awesome when we were like 8 years old. Most of us (I hope) grew out of that. Chances at being hired are slim and developers get shut down all the time or have to overwork. Your "love for videogames" ain't going to worth jack if you can't even sleep 8 hours straight or pay the bills.
I'm sorry but at the least for this guy it's childish, most of anyone that was serious about making a videogame would have made a UT mod or level or something awesome in LBP by now. This guy comes off like "I don't know how to do it but now that I have the motivation, it's going to work out!!!" It never works like that, you need talent, dedication...not some 20 forum posts from random people "to prepare for possible pitfalls"
Don't waste your life on a misplaced love for videogames.
I want a game where you play as a plucky student who wants to be a video game designer, who in the course of the game learns that even with a mountain of coding knowledge and creativity, the chances of actually becoming a lead designer on a major game is infinitesimally small. I applaud your enthusiasm, but the realist in me knows that there are very few individuals at the mountaintop.
But that's not helpful...so here's my recommendation: I'd suggest picking up Rise of the Videogame Zinesters - the book gives a great overview of cheap and easy ways to start playing around with game development (including modding as mentioned in other posts). While the games you might make won't be AAA titles, they'll be great exercises in learning how rules dictate gameplay and give you a good introduction on basic coding for user input.
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